Puebla de Pedraza

The thermometer drops six degrees in the last ten kilometres. Wheat stubble gives way to Scots pine, the air smells of resin instead of dust, and Madrid’s radio stations dissolve into static. At 950 m above sea level, Puebla de Pedraza is less a destination than a punctuation mark between the plateau and the mountains.

Fifty-two residents, three streets, one church and no supermarket. The village map fits on the back of an envelope: Calle Real, where tractors still outnumber cars; Calle del Medio, paved but pitted; and the upper lane, still dirt in places, that ends at the cemetery wall. Stone houses with timber eaves sit shoulder-to-shoulder, their wooden gates painted the same ox-blood red as the soil. Adobe walls bulge like well-fed ponies; a few have given up and returned to the ground, creating accidental courtyards where figs self-seed.

The village wakes when the sun clears the pine ridge. First the baker from Pedraza arrives with yesterday’s baguettes in a white van, then the farmer crosses the square with a plastic bucket of whey for the hunting dogs. By nine the aroma of woodsmove drifts from chimneys; by ten the place is silent again, save for the chain-saw whine of a moped disappearing towards the N-110.

Walking is the only organised activity. A farm track leaves the last house, ducks through a break in the dry-stone wall and climbs gently between cereal strips and fallow deer tracks. After forty minutes the path tops a low crest; suddenly Pedraza’s medieval skyline appears across the valley, caramel-coloured walls floating above morning haze. The return loop swings past an abandoned cortijo where storks nest on the cracked chimney; allow two hours, carry water, expect boot-deep mud after rain.

Winter sharpens everything. Night frosts can linger until eleven, and the village fountain wears a sleeve of ice. When snow closes the pass to Somosierra, the only traffic is the daily school run in a 4×4. Yet the cold brings advantages: empty lanes, wood fires in the three rental cottages, and the chance of seeing imperial eagles cruising the thermals above the pines. Summer reverses the deal. Day-trippers spill over from Pedraza, cameras click, and the silence is broken by English, French and the occasional Japanese. August evenings smell of charcoal and roast lamb drifting up from the restaurants three kilometres away.

There is nowhere to eat in Puebla itself. Lunch means driving to Pedraza’s arcaded square for cordero asado (order half a portion for two; a whole segovian lamb could feed the village) or heading down to the truck-stop on the main road where judiones – butter beans the size of squash balls – arrive swimming in ham broth. Breakfast is simpler: buy a loaf the night before, borrow the cottage’s toaster, and top the toast with grated tomato, oil and a pinch of salt. Coffee? Make it yourself; the nearest bar opens at ten, shuts at two, and may not open at all if the owner has gone mushrooming.

Mushrooms are serious business. From October until the first snow, cars with Madrid plates nose along the verges while locals stalk the pine margins with curved knives. Níscalos (saffron milk-caps) fetch €18 a kilo at Segovia market; pick more than the three-kilo daily limit without a licence and the regional fine starts at €300.外人 are watched, politely but closely. Ask before you stoop, and never photograph a full basket.

Accommodation is limited to four self-catering houses and one two-room guesthouse. Prices hover around €90 a night for two, linen and firewood included. One cottage keeps its original hayloft ladder; another has a glass floor over the old pigsty. Hot water is on demand, Wi-Fi is theoretical, and mobile coverage depends on which corner of the courtyard you stand in. Book ahead for Easter weekend and the December candle-light fiesta in neighbouring Pedraza; at other times you can phone on Thursday and arrive on Friday.

The church, dedicated to San Andrés, is unlocked only for Saturday mass. Step inside and the temperature falls another five degrees. Walls are thick enough to swallow phone signals; the nave is the width of a London bus. A single bulb swings above a baroque altar pieced together after the 1936 fire – pine salvaged from local beams, gesso painted to look like marble. The bell rope hangs temptingly close; resist. Ringing without permission is a social offence akin to walking into someone’s kitchen and boiling the kettle.

Evenings belong to the sky. At 950 m, cloud formations build like opera scenery; light lingers for an hour after the plateau has gone grey. Photographers station themselves by the stone cross at the village edge, tripods angled west. When the wind drops, swifts cut silhouettes against the glow and the air smells of thyme crushed under tripod legs. Bring a jacket; altitude chill arrives before the light has faded.

Leaving, the descent feels steeper than the climb up. Madrid’s heat rises to meet you; pine scent evaporates in exhaust fumes. In the rear-view mirror Puebla de Pedraza shrinks to a dark smudge on the hillside, indistinguishable from the outcrops around it. Whether that smudge stays with you depends on what you came for. If you needed a tick-list of sights, you will be disappointed. If you wanted to see how Castile lives when the tour buses turn elsewhere, the village will lodge like a splinter – small, unexpected, impossible to explain to friends who measure travel in checkboxes and souvenir teaspoons.